Monday, April 21, 2014

"This was a real nice clambake"

My husband is very sad that Pascha is over. He sat on the couch last night as the sun set, "watching the last light of Pascha," as he put it, and mournfully saying that he felt like a child at the end of Christmas, surrounded by the toys, wrapping paper and and leftovers, with the future hope of playing with the toys, but the languor of discharged anticipation.

Early this morning, before he had to go to work, I warmed up our leftover Pascha breakfast of pancakes and sausages and we ate it under the twinkly Christmas lights, next to a pineapple and a "bouquet" of freshly dried palms. He was still sad. But he also keeps fervently insisting that it was A Great Pascha. My minor sunburn, tired voice and sore feet sleepily agree.

Working on Bright Monday really is a shame. When I'm the boss, nobody's going to do anything that isn't fun on Bright Monday. We don't celebrate things for long enough in this country. We think we're so carefree, but we really don't know how to party.

Indeed He is Risen! We wondered what mikri anastasi meant... a Pascha that's too short? If so, we agree.

It's so easy to get bummed on Bright Monday. I think it's important to do some more special celebrating during Bright Week, even if it's just going to get a milkshake with a friend, taking a nice bike ride or walk, dressing up all purty, or putting some flowers on the table. I imagine that doing nice things for other people would help too, especially if they don't know it's Pascha. (I'll have to give it a try.)

Thank God the weather is so beautiful and that the magnolias are blooming. That really helps the joy linger and makes for some cheap thrills.

Mikri anastasi is what in Greece they call the Holy Saturday morning liturgy, because he brought the Good News to the dead in Hades.

I agree with your suggestions! That's important to remember. Fortunately there are a lot of services scheduled at CTS this week. I don't like it when we don't have any services at scheduled during Bright Week. Also have other fun stuff planned, so yay. And yes, the weather helps!

We only have Holy Thursday vespers this year. I totally get that priests are fried, but it makes me sad. Matt was talking last night about how weird it is to fast for so long, sharing SO many services with your community, and then only really get 24 hours of communal feasting. It's such a rude awakening to go back into the world that I think getting together to keep the feast, both with services and parties, is very important. It would be better than just filling your pie-hole at home... *sigh*

I definitely try to take Bright Monday off when possible and very much appreciate it when there's a Bright Monday liturgy. It feels so casual and happy. Services in Bright Week are so light and joyful.

I always advocated taking off Bright Monday when I worked in an Orthodox school, but we would have had to sacrifice taking off Holy Thursday. Now I think I would go for it, just for that feeling of freedom on Sunday night. But since the school met in a Serbian church, we ended up skipping lots of class for Bright Week services anyway. Oh, their leftovers were so good... and FYI they actually do sing this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuczNQonTXQ

I definitely had a post-Christmas-like letdown this year during Bright Week, in spite of making it to Bright Monday services! Maybe because I missed several parts of Pascha weekend....so it was the first time I made it to Bright Saturday liturgy, and that almost made up for it. It does seem to me that we need a week of celebrating to do justice to the feast, and maybe to help us transition to "the real world," taking whatever we can retain of Paschal LIFE with us....